Truly international start for the Vlerick Executive MBA in Leuven

With no less than 58 new students starting recently in Leuven during the kick-off week, our Executive MBA format has proven its value. 37 Belgian students will be undertaking this challenge together with 21 non-Belgian students, representing a total number of 15 countries. This is a truly international programme, with 36% international students being a very high percentage for an Executive MBA programme. Two full days of tuition every 3 weeks over an 18-month period ensure the right level of intensity, coherence and flexibility while allowing sufficient time for independent learning.

Most of the international students are working for a company based in Belgium, minimising thereby the amount of travelling involved. However, for German nationalChristoph Müller, who is working as Relationship Manager Financial Institute for the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart, the Executive programme in Leuven is definitely a well-considered choice: “The aspect of studying abroad was not the reason why I chose Vlerick. As Vlerick is one of the best business schools in Europe, it was one of my favourite schools right from the start. Finally, different factors led to my decision. For instance, I like the personal and familiar atmosphere and the fact that it is a rather small school, where you surely do not have the feeling of getting lost. The courses at the weekend fit perfectly into my busy professional life and schedule. In view of the travelling distance of 500 km between Germany and Belgium, easy accessibility was also important for me. I have the choice between train, car and airplane with a total travel time of around four hours. Vlerick is the perfect place for me to study in an international environment.”

For Christoph the kick-off week was a very intense, interesting and inspiring experience. “These seven days were tough and demanding and afterwards I needed a few days to fully recover, but it was an impressive start of this new part of my life. It was the right mixture of getting to know each other, having the first interesting courses and getting used to the level of activity that will be necessary in the next 18 months.”

His fellow students come from many different educational and professional backgrounds. “It is very inspiring to be surrounded by engineers, economists, lawyers, pharmacologists, philosophers, IT specialists and many others which leads to very interesting discussions due to the different points of view. We are a very international group as well, me being the only German. This aspect gives every student the opportunity to look at a problem from a different perspective. I feel very comfortable in this heterogeneous environment, which contributes a lot to the unique experience at Vlerick.”

Flexible programme structure

The Vlerick Executive MBA Programme has been designed to offer maximum flexibility and fit the working schedule of our candidates. With this in mind we offer three different formats. The evening format which starts in the fall of this year at our Brussels campus has weekly classes 2 days a week. Besides that you can also opt for a 3 weekly class rotation either on Fridays and Saturdays at the Ghent campus or the weekend formula on Saturdays and Sundays at the Leuven campus.

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